The varied applications for the many types of rolled tapes call for a variety of types of dispensers. One of the simplest types of dispensers heretofore known is commonly used to dispense ordinary transparent tape. The type of dispenser being spoken of supports a roll of tape in a housing carrying a cutting edge downstream in the path in which the roll unwinds. The tape is dispensed by grasping a free end extending from the roll, stripping an extending portion of tape from the roll, pulling a desired length of the extending portion across the cutting edge, and severing the desired length from the extending portion.
In many instances it is highly desirable that the tape be used as a device for what might be considered a permanent attachment of one surface article to another, for example the attachment of a flat, paper cut-out onto the surface of a scrap book page. For such use of the tape, even the most simple dispensers present the tape to the user so that an adhesive side of the tape may be conveniently pressed against the article to be mounted and the surface on which the article is to be mounted. The tape may be smoothed out, in the case of transparent tape until it becomes practically invisible. But when smoothed out for maximum bonding, the tape can only be removed by picking at its edges to gain the leverage to grasp and pull the tape away. By this technique tape is usually destroyed, sometimes the surfaces to which the tape is attached are damaged, and in some instances tape is left on the surfaces.
In many other instances, it is highly desirable that the tape be used as a device for temporary attachment of one surface article to another. For one example, drafting tape is applied to temporarily hold paper in place while it is being drawn or drafted upon. For another, tape of the same or similar constitution is used for masking areas or providing straight edge templates during painting. Either of these two examples calls for a quick and efficient method of removing the tape after its temporary use, including a quick and efficient method of grasping the tape adhering to a surface even if the adherence is of a relatively low order. As yet another example, slips of paper containing annotations are sometimes temporarily attached by transparent tape to "clean" documents in original condition without annotations, so that the documents may be photocopied with the appearence of having the annotations on them. After the photocopying, the slips containing the annotations are to be detached from the documents to restore them to their "clean", original condition. For this latter use, conventional adhesive dispenser makes no accomodation and fingers must be used to attach tabs or form tabs to be grapsed to pull away the tape after its temporary use. Such operations take up time, involve excessive manual touching of the tape, and are complicated by difficulty in removing tape from the fingers.